Liver fibrosis is usually caused by excessive deposition of extracellular matrix proteins and often appears in most types of patients of chronic liver disease. Since early liver fibrosis or liver cirrhosis is reversible or controllable, an accurate and effective early diagnosis of liver fibrosis is essential.
Shear wave elastography can quantitatively assess the degree of liver fibrosis and liver cirrhosis by measuring liver stiffness values. The most widely used in clinical non-invasive liver fibrosis grading detection is the transient elastography.
Since the liver is a viscoelastic body, i.e., a viscoelastic medium, and changes in its viscoelastic parameter is closely related to a variety of liver diseases, liver viscoelasticity parameter can provide very valuable information for the early diagnosis of liver fibrosis.
At present, a measurement of a tissue is mainly to measure an elastic parameter of the tissue, while ignore a viscosity parameter, i.e., viscoelastic parameter of the tissue, which has an adverse effect on detection results of an early lesion of tissues, such as liver fibrosis.